


The Oenly Helpe Possible

by edna_blackadder



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Good Omens Holiday Exchange 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2784578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edna_blackadder/pseuds/edna_blackadder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Agnes Nutter was mad, there was method in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Oenly Helpe Possible

**Author's Note:**

> Written for go_exchange 2013. Thanks to sarcasticsra for the beta.

Most prophets are either lying, or addled by one controlled or uncontrolled substance or another, or possibly they are both. But Agnes Nutter was not most prophets, and most prophets were not Agnes Nutter. Nor would they be, ever, or at least not for more than three centuries. The Future was very clear on that point.

There are only two ways you can go when your head is constantly buzzing with some 300 years' worth of nice and accurate knowledge, and Agnes had chosen the other one. Agnes knew before she opened her mouth that the villagers would scoff at her recommendations of hand-washing, exercise and consumption of fibre. She also knew that it did not matter much; they'd all be going up in a blaze soon enough, and she would be at the centre of it. If they wanted to sport a few rotting, plague-blackened fingertips as they were blown to bits, it was all the same to her.

When it came to innovations in medicine, Agnes was more interested in the idea that one day there would be doctors specialising in the health of the mind, who would ask their patients to lie down and then talk to them in kindly voices. 'Buggre alle that,' said Agnes scornfully to her kitchen. 'As certainely as Joshua Device forgotten sharle be, I telle ye laughter is the oenly helpe possible.'

And she thought, as she let out a hearty spectral chuckle and gazed down at Adam Young, that it was well worth it.

*

Agnes Nutter would never have claimed to have seen the whole, total Future, nor would she have claimed to have understood all or even most of her visions. Partly because she had been having them since infancy, when she couldn't understand anything, and partly because things like the internal combustion engine, videotape recorders and the American Revolution required rather more context than her split-second glimpses could hope to provide. If she had been interested in money, Agnes could have made a mint by writing an entirely different sort of book, using her imagination to fill in the gaps, but she knew when she was due to be set on fire, and she concluded that she would not have the time, either to complete such a book or to enjoy her earnings from it. She had thousands of nice and accurate visions to sort through before Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer put the torch to her, and time was of the essence.

Agnes couldn't possibly see or understand everything, but she saw and understood a great deal more than any of her professional descendants, up to and including Anathema, would ever give her credit for doing. She learned early on not to slave away over the technical details. If a future mode of transport looked like a chariot, she could call it a chariot and trust that one of them would eventually work it out. She did sometimes wonder how they moved by themselves, without horses, and so fast too, but it gave her a headache. By the time a computing machine entered her head, she knew full well not to waste ten seconds trying to understand its magic, but simply to describe it as best she might, and laugh at the thought she still probably understood it better than Newton Pulsifer was ever likely to do.

She could see generations of Devices debating her words, shaking their heads at what she had or hadn't bothered to include, and dismissing her, when they of all people ought to know better, as a product of her time.

She chose her words more carefully than any of them ever realised. Precise and exact indeed: just because the Ende dreweth nigh didn't mean it couldn't be stopped. But if they weren't there, in the right place at the right time, then it mightn't be stopped at all. What was some incident in the New World when a stray brick in King's Lynn might send her great-great-great-great-grandson to meet his maker early, negating Anathema's existence, a chance to stop the Apocalypse and one last perfect, extraordinary insult to Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery? What did it matter about new machines and the rise and fall of Empires? There was only one moment that counted, and she had her own part to play in it, and _The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter_ was that part. If Anathema and Newt had read _Further Nife and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter_ , they would have discovered it to be something else entirely. 

The first prophecy the manuscript contained was this:

'Ye shalle of course choose to knoe not, ungrateful swaine, but Wonne needes a Hobbie, does Wonne notte?'

_Further Nife and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter_ was Agnes' idea of self-therapy. Doing your job in the quest to avert Armageddon did tend to fray one's nerves a bit even without random flashes of three centuries of the Future presenting themselves in one's head at any moment. One needed a way to unwind. It was still worth sending it along, of course. George Cranby, Arthur Bychance and Giles Baddicombe had made sure of that.

Another noteworthy prophecy read thus:

'Spitte yt oute alreddy, for the answere is Yes.'

This one could be interpreted two ways. Actually, four ways. Agnes had to laugh as she watched Newt struggle to come up with an appropriate way to propose to Anathema, considering all manner of grand gestures and almost but not quite getting up the nerve. She watched Anathema wonder whether she ought to let him have his moment or take matters into her own hands, but she had insight into the futures of several others as well.

These bits had always been the hardest for her to work out. Her visions had always most clearly focussed on her descendants, and that made sense; of course she would want to look after them. Future cataclysmic events with worldwide ramifications but no personal connexion to any Devices came to her in a more blurred, less intelligible fashion. The only other things she saw as clearly the future of her own line always involved a boy and his dog and his friends, a Witchfinder whose politics and standards of personal hygiene for many years caused her to mistake him for being from her own time, an inept fraud of a medium, an angel, a demon and a small cadre of anthropomorphic personifications.

The Horsepersons of the Apocalypse were readily identifiable to Agnes Nutter. Death especially so, as what else could he be, but the others also stood out to Agnes in a way that they do not do to ordinary humans. She had a good guffaw over Pestilence's retirement, undone by mould of all things. That prediction was in _The Nice and Accurate Prophecies_ , and Agnes had known, as she wrote it, that it would be comprehensible to one reader only.

Aziraphale and Crowley had given her more trouble. They weren't human; she could tell that much. There was something vaguely serpentine about Crowley, but more telling was how different the world around them seemed to look from vision to vision. She might not be able to comprehend a car as anything more than a funny chariot, but she could see that the world was changing.

Agnes, despite what Quincy and Miss O J may have thought, did not drink well most nights, but Crowley and Aziraphale did, and it was this that allowed her, at last, to put together just who and what they were. The subject of Eden could only come up under such circumstances. So could hesitant hints of another subject, and that one provided Agnes many nights of laughter that, as her imminent burning drew nearer, she desperately needed. When she learned that Aziraphale would eventually read _The Nice and Accurate Prophecies_ , she seriously considered including at least one reference to it, but eventually she decided that distracting the angel while he was attempting to avert the Apocalypse might be a rather imprudent move. Not that it mattered anyway, as in the Ende it would all be down to Anathema, Newt, Adam Young, and Themme, but still. Agnes made up for this by stuffing her _Further Nife and Accurate Prophecies_ manuscript with several such references, like this one:

'Yt is Ineffable, that Deville and Angell together be Manne, have ye not wated longe enough? Shorely it can notte be that difficult an Effort to maike, yowe daft Immortels.'

From the smoke above Jasmine Cottage, Agnes winked at Adam. It did not bother her that her remarks would never be read by any of their targets. She was quite certain that the Antichrist was capable of subconsciously recalling anything he wanted, whether he had ever seen it before, and he would put it to good use. Her face vanished from sight, but as the wisps of smoke dispersed, she could still see him chasing Dog, climbing a tree, and eating an apple. She grinned, and disappeared from the Earth once more.


End file.
